infra-Legalities
infra-Legalities rethinks global security law from the ‘infrastructure space’ it is creating, examining how AI-led security, and the data infrastructures that sustain it, are reshaping law and governance, rights and accountability and security decision-making. The project focuses on three areas of data-driven security governance that are rapidly expanding in the present: digital bordering infrastructures for controlling cross-border movements of ‘risky’ people, platform infrastructures for countering terrorist and violent extremist content online, and counterterrorism watchlisting infrastructures. It develops the concept of ‘infra-legalities’ to examine how data infrastructures and legal/regulatory processes co-produce each other in practice. The project aims to open different ways of conceptualising and studying algorithmic security governance and the problems it is creating, bringing those building global security infrastructures and those affected and targeted by them into relation.
The infra-Legalities project is led by Dr. Gavin Sullivan, Reader in International Human Rights Law. It is financially supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (Grant Ref: MR/T041552/1) and affiliated with the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law (ECIGL). In 2025 the Edinburgh core research team will be expanding to include two postdoctoral researchers and one PhD researcher. It involves a range of academic collaborators from Kings College London, University of Copenhagen, New York University, University of Birmingham, University of Sydney, University of Chicago, ITAM University from international law, critical security studies, informatics and legal anthropology. Other project partners include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Ada Lovelace Institute, Bellingcat, and the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETAS) at the Alan Turing Institute.
For more information about the infra-Legalities research project, and details of current news, events and outputs, please visit the project website.
